The Hacking Era
The Hacking Era was a time in Pokémon Tower Defense history where the game was in a vulnerable state. This then started the hacking ErA at about April 2011 and was at its height in May 2011 when Sam wrote, "Now making a game as popular as PTD is going to get attention from a lot of people. Some of those people enjoy exploiting and hacking games. This is going to happen when the game is played offline and all the information is easy to edit. So instead of fighting them, I've talked to them, and here is the resolution. If anybody wants to play the game with pokemon that are easier to catch (hit them once and they will turn red), x3 exp given per kill, x5 money given per kill, they can. Why not?" A mistake he would soon regret, which caused a spree of hacking. A few months later in early July, Sam had enough of hackers and decided to put a stop to it so he put up an advanced security system, this historic event is known as Sam's New Security. This ended the 1st hacking era. The section below has been written by m16dernwarfare himself in order to document PTD histro y After this time there was a brief period of calm in the ptd world. Throughout July 2011, pokemon regained their values, notably shiny starter mystery gifts. The start of august 2011 brought more people into the game, as trading became overwhelmingly popular. This was also the start of the 2nd hacking era. Graphicforce was one of the first people to display the hacking capabilities of a program called cheat engine. The program itself is very simple, however it is the bane of flash games for its hex memory editing properites. After successfully showing off cheat engine and the new "speedhack" (which sped up waves of pokemon), additional hacks and improvements were made by m16dernwarfare and other hackers. Things like freezing waves, level hacks, and move hacks were abundent at this time. Pokemon values started to slide, the only things that remained "worth" something were the legendary dogs, shiny mew, shiny starters/rare mystery gift pokemon, and the newly released pokemon. Since hacks were still "not as well known", when a new shiny came out, for a few days it would be worth a HUGE amount, but then the supply would be flooded and it would decrease. This 2nd era lasted from August 2011- December 2011. The "big" hacks of this time were the shiny hacks. This basically tanked all shiny and mystery gift values. Only later shinys goldeen+ would retain their value as they were patched right before shiny goldeen was released. By this time, sam had dirastically improved security to the PTD game. This lead to a shortage of hacks during the winter break period. Many of the "simple" hacks were blocked or detected by hacking. Even though the affected pokemon never really recovered in value, the goldeen+ pokemon (the pokemon released at and after goldeen) rapidly climbed the value charts as people rushed to trade their 'worthless' pokemon for the new "unhackable" shinys. This time period also included the addition of the "game corner", and with it shadow pokemon. They also reached new values as they were "unhackable" and unobtainable in game as well. The 3rd hacking period started late january 2012 and lasted until the end of PTD 1, with the story concluding sometime in may 2012. This is the hacking period that ultimatly 'destroyed' the game and basically finished off the recovering trade marketplace. The first advancements of this period were complex cheat engine hacks. Longer to develop and harder to use, they basically found holes in sam's improved security, which resulted in unusual hacks. Two "holy grails" were the shiny mew evolve hack and the hp bar hack. This was the first time since the generators the shiny mews were hacked. Even though the hack was hard to use and small amounts of people used it, it destroyed faith in the shiny mew 'as the standerd of the ptd economy'. The official forum's shiny mew value dropped from 50-60k to 25-40k. These hacks hurt the economy quite a bit, however they still didn't really affect the goldeen+ shinys or the shadow/shiny dog population. The PTD economy actually recovered a bit from FEB 2012- March 2012 because of new pokemon releases. The period of time from April 2012-May 2012 spelled the end of everything for PTD1's economy. In April, a hacker known as smrrd, (samurai) developed a new generator for the PTD game. This enables the hacker to deposit any CATCHABLE pokemon into accounts directly. This instantly destroyed the goldeen+ pokemon as well as the shiny/shadow bird values. Over night, shiny lapras and snorlax lv100 could be found more common than an normal pidgey because the hack made pokemons at the rate of 200 per minute. This devastated the economy as many accounts were rendered worthless. However the legends had been untouched, and retained and even increased their value! May 2012 was the release of the "sam tools hack". Sam had made some of his tools he used to deposit pokemon into accounts who paid for snd coins accidentally available on the internet. His domain name wasn't protected, so a few people found the index file, and leaked the links. This hack was only released for one hour on m16dernwarfare's channel before it got banned for releasing the hack, and it was very quickly patched a few hours later. However this was too late. People could literally input any number into sam's tools and get that many number of pokemon. Any pokemon, normal, shiny, and shadow could be generated. Sam quickly deleted the hacked snd coins from the accounts, however, he didn't do a crucial account rollback for whatever reason. This totaled the PTD 1 economy as pokemon from shiny suicune to shadow mew were devastated in value. People who had paid real life money for snd coins found their accounts worthless. This caused many people to quit the game, and really hampered trading for months to come. The affects of this hack can still be found today. Many of the hacked legends still remain, and are often used in giveaways. Since the hack could generate any pokemon, many such as things like groudon and latios were also generated. These new "ultra rare" pokemon were mostly, but not completely deleted from the system. The death of PTD 1 was a wakeup call for sam. It proved that his "improved security" was not enough, and that hacks had a real affect on the game and can not be ignored. In my words, PTD was destined to fail. Making a game in flash will always result in vulnuabilities. More effort and attention would be needed to safeguard the PTD world from another uber hacking collapse. Even though PTD 1 had died, there was still hope. Sam was working on ptd 2, with new and improved security. This would mean a new beginning for trading as everyone would start over, without hacks, and pokemon would be worth something. People who had quit from PTD 1 rejoiced in this new development. When the game was released, people were full on trading, trying to relieve the glory days from 2011. However, the hacking would not be so easily stopped. Right as the game was released, initally nothing could be hacked. However it soon became apparent that security had major flaws right off the bat. Most of the PTD 1 hacks could still be reapplied to PTD 2, and that some of the patched PTD 1 hacks were somehow unpatched in the new game. This caused another mass hacking scenario that threatened the overtake the game again. This occured from Setpember 2012-November 2012. Sam rolled back the hacked accounts, an action he hadn't taken for over a year, and patched many of the major hacks. This was deemed sams "new security 2.0". This has definatly taken a bite out of hacking efforts, and currently the game is pretty stable. However there is a new era of PTD 2 hacking that could happen. There are some very devastating hacks developed by anonymous, who hasn't released them. Since they have not been released to anyone, no one, not even me knows how they work. The notable onces are Duplication Hack and God Hack 4.0. For now it seems the game is safe, even though pokemon have been hacked through these methoids, they are not likely to be released to anyone,. Sam must continue to develop anti hacking techniques, or he will fall behind , which could result in a theroretical 4th hacking era. This would most likely have tremendous effects on the game's economy. In my opinion, sam needs to give incentives for people who patch hacks, in order to gather more info. Thanks for reading, I know this was long, but this is the full history of PTD hacking. m16 ~ the PTD Overlord xD edit dup and god hack are now patched, but new hack in development is another sam website exploit, avatar chat and other snd coin generator.An snd coin glitch: you have to adopt your own pokemon in the adoption, and then you get your pokemon and another snd.hope it helps and have fun hacking! Category:Game Mechanics